Видео

58:15 The modulating your own difficulty thing is the worst part of Elden Ring for me. Getting to a boss and finding out you are over levelled is a terrible experience. The second worst part is how inconsitent bosses are. Sometimes they try to crush you and sometimes they just give up, its just RNG.

47:20 And once again another person that reached the same conclusion about what Matthewmattosis said in his video. If I wanted to play a game with this much action and movement, I'd rather go play Sekiro or DMC instead of Elden Ring. It's like the game is trying to be something that it has no technical capability of fulfilling. This is what people mean when they say "dark souls movement with sekiro enemies"

I definitely agree that the combat system of this and similar games has some real limitations. When the only way they can keep challenging players further is by giving bosses longer combos, more AOE's and more deceptive animations, nothing interesting can really be achieved by continuing down this path. I'd love for souls likes to either start leaning more in an action game direction, or more in the RPG direction. Pick one, then flesh it out. Stamina bars + rolling are kinda played out, unless you focus on interesting level design and itemization, instead of ever increasing difficulty.

I'd like to quickly add my voice to an excitingly reasonable discussion here as someone who loved the DLC and Elden Ring as a whole despite all its flaws. I agree that what you've said about how boss movesets are designed is true, however, I do not see it as a problem. The process of learning a boss in Elden Ring is extremely satisfying, not despite, but because of all the game does to trip me up. Yes, the bosses treat me like they know they’re in a video game but that falls squarely into my suspension of disbelief along with stealth game enemies behaving in reliable patterns, or turn based rpg enemies not immediately focusing down my visibly squishy support character. The thrill of entering the zone, overcoming your inbuilt instincts, and workshopping unconventional enemy behavior is an absolute joy and has resulted in some of the most satisfying boss combat I've had in a soulslike. The issues in readability do little to detract from it for me. Especially with Radahn, flying by the seat of my pants trying to understand what was going on was an absolute rush. And once I had it figured out, the visual clutter was never an issue because I could already intuit what he was doing from what I could see. In your conclusion, you posit that each of Elden Ring’s qualities are eclipsed by other games, therefore there is no real reason to play it over them. I think that simply isn’t true. Art direction and enemy visual design are sat astride the peak of the high fantasy genre. And while the open world certainly struggles to fill itself with enough variety (believe me, I was tweaking at the third copy paste dragon boss in a row), the joy of mapping out the space, peering across vistas, determining how to reach that location you’ve been eyeing, stumbling across dungeons and encounters organically, then realizing that this one find you thought would be nothing major suddenly opens up into a whole new area or bespoke boss fight - it’s simply incredible. Yes, the moment to moment soulslike content is often not quite on the same level of novelty as previous games, less tight, more padded, but it still overall consists of well designed iterations. It trades part of the dense curation of previous FromSoft games for sheer scope and wonder. Elden Ring is so flawed but, to me, it is not generic and it is far more than the sum of its parts. In fact, the sum of its parts is frustrating beyond belief in how many corners they had to cut and how close the game is to falling apart at the seams. I don’t want every soulslike to be this way, but the sense of wonder, the rewarding of the pure act of exploration, has scarcely been matched by any game I’ve played before or since. DS1 and 2, as well as Hollow Knight, come close, but they are not as grand and open. Skyrim, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Witcher 3 were fun, but all, for one design choice or another, did not have the same raw feeling of unbridled, seamless joy in their exploration for me. By all means, if you know of a game that matches this sense of wonder, please tell me cause I’ve been looking and I’ve yet to find it. It can be anything, any genre, it can be an RPG maker game, I don’t care.

I didnt hate it. Didnt love it. Its actually much easier second time through on ng+ tho.

To me personally im not a fan of how over the top and "anime" these recent games have become now especially with Nightreign. I really am missing the grounded dark fantasy setting of dark souls like if I wanted to play final fantasy i would have freakin bought final fantasy

Thank God I thought I was losing my mind! I enjoyed everything about the DLC that did not include fighting elite enemies and bosses. The gameplay does not support how frustratingly over the top the moment-to-moment fights are in the DLC. It was a slight problem in the main game towards the end. The DLC is riddled.

Thia video fully explains the crack in their design...alas though thwir fanbase are cultists now and the fucktards demnaded a dlc win goty lol

That section on Unremarkable Combat is so painfully true

Nightreign response... Immediately.

For the projectiles, just as an idea, the game targets even if not locked on, why not prioritize projectiles there and when manual locked the priority switches to enemies?

Hey I’ve really started watching your videos and really liked your SOTE critique. I heard you’re into monster hunter too, is 4U worth playing? I finished iceborne and loved it! Fatalis and Alatreon were fantastic (minus that dps check nonsense).

I played the absolute fuck out of DS1 on release, didn't enjoy ds2/ds3/sekiro enough that I felt the need to run out and buy elden ring. The only fromsoft game I'd buy full price nowadays would be a Tenchu. So yes I'm an old git, and remember that when the DLC came out for DS1, a pretty common complaint about the Manus fight was that most of the difficulty came from not being able to tell what the fuck you're looking at during the fight due to his model. The writing was on the wall a long time ago

this video i think is built on a lot of bad faith and uses a lot of "trust me bro" and actively ignores existing mechanics in the game to play the game. refusing to engage with the game's mechanic and its more difficult because of it? its not the game's fault you refuse to. i cant remember where i heard it, but i know at some point in efap theo claimed that he struggled on a boss fight for awhile then summoned spirit ashes and beat it immediately. its almost as if you get accustomed to a tough fight and then play it on the intended difficulty, it feels way easier. also whats up with the hate for spirit ashes? it makes the game too easy? they can beat boss all the time with no input from the player? those are extremely niche playstyles that you dont arrive to in a normal game. spirit ashes by design are weak and will always lose to the boss. they're meant to draw aggro so the player can get some hits in. balancing aggro between yourself and your summons is part of the game. i dont think that's a difficult concept for the enlightened theo. does the game do it badly? maybe say that instead. i think discounting the difficulty of the game is also unfair. boss fights are more aggressive, more attacks to be wary of, more damage, more health, more everything. its a dlc thats more difficult. if it was just a dlc that didnt have any of this, that would be lame. its quite clearly about a more difficult experience. a particular issue i found very annoying is how theo claimed the duelist changes the timing of their attack. rellana. but you have the video recorded. you could just time it yourself and see if there was any actual timing difference. and the issue of the attacks feeling not human, i think there's a better way to say what you wanted to say. attacks meant to mimic feints, but the player nor the game can actually take advantage of successful feints because feints require human input to take advantage of an improper response to a successful feint. but even in writing that, isnt that the point of the weird timing of rellana's attacks? they're a duelist with attacks that have an offbeat timing to make their attacks more difficult to dodge. but no human would do it the way they do? they're a knight in full plated armor. and the realism argument is a slippery slope that goes nowhere. structure of the video is messy to say the least. for being one of the more outspoken critiques of elden ring and its dlc, this needed more time in the oven. a lot of these arguments are, "i feel these attacks are too annoying and overpowered" and "trust me bro, im actually good at the game." and the frequent benign insult that makes you like a mosquito that wont stop buzzing that you're actually good at the game. i think for the amount of time its taken for this video to come out, and im gonig off of what i heard in efaps. some few months, i heard. this is pretty awful. sometimes clips arent provided either for rather simple things. evidence is lacking. claims are asserted and nothing noteworthy was said. i've never played the dlc, but ive played the base game. but, it dont take a genius to realize you're lacking proper evidence to make a stronger argument. elden ring is the new gold standard and will continue to be in the coming future for souls like games. this video could've help steer the quality of the game in a better direction. but the poor structure, missing evidence, and trust me bro i saw in the game when i played it was extensive. the video quality is no better than like my random youtube comment being dropped here. a stream of consciousness being written out and posted as it is with seemingly very little revision. chat was right. madcuzbad

I’d still rather play this than trash like new god of war

I had a very good time with Elden Ring, but I definitely noticed some the issues that you mentioned in this video...My biggest issue is ridiculous roll catch delays and the spring attacks...They ruin the flow of a boss fight imo...It seems every company making Souls-like games are doing this now which really sucks...It's very noticeable everytime I go back to DS3, I thought the bosses in DS3 were mostly amazing to fight...They aren't perfect either, but they feel very satisfying to dodge...And they are difficult but not because of a handle full of stupid moves put there to purposely trick you...

pvp adresses most of the issues coming from "there is no reason to use anything else but my strongest attack (read blasp blade L2)" but it creates a lot of other issues, the main one being latency idk if you tried to get into it but yeah

Great video. I listened to you on some podcast months and months ago and was impressed particularly by you. Although I was disappointed to see you had less than 5 videos I do respect how well thought out and detailed your videos are. Do hope these continue.

15:50 that attack is just evil

The telegraphing section is on point. The enemy animations in elden ring look so fucking goofy because they're designed for the sole purpose of tricking people who have played prior souls games. So immersion breaking.

Great job, Theo! This is easily the beast long-form video about Elden Ring or Shadow of the Erdtree I've seen. I don't realy get From's urge to make an open world game, all the resources and manpower that was wasted on making generic and repetitive ruins and dungeons could be thrown to make gigant interconnected metroidvania-style blob of a world (essentially making first half of Dark Souls but bigger). They could still make branching paths and optional areas to emphasize player freedom, but they could at least try to balance it instead of giving up on it completely. This especially sad because (as of now) Dark Souls belongs to the same group of games as Morrowind or New Vegas. The games that never got a proper sequel, they all have technical sequels that use the same engine and core-gameplay but build with completely different set of principles and priorities. We never got a Dark Souls but polished and bigger, and it seems like Fromsoftware isn't going to make one.

4:06 sounds like you should use the Furled Finger to be able to control the camera and roll at the same time. You can also change the camera speed btw

Try jumping and strafing

In reference to your conclusion: instead of making the bosses harder i would like them to make the player weaker. Build a game around a ds1 fat rolling starting armour knight where the roll is an option of last resort

I'd love a souls game where you have to block certain attacks with a shield, certain attacks with a sword/staff parry, dodge certain attacks & jump over certain attacks. Basically Sekiro's combat but more applied to a Dark Fantasy setting. Anything that stops players from spam rolling.

I didnt buy this DLC because I despised the base game so much by the time I got to Farum Azula that I decided to hold off giving From any nore money until I see what direction they take things. Glad I didn't miss out. Also your healthbar is insane. The next FS game will need to feature auto-wrap health bars.

Lovely video. Might be time for me to buy Darkest Dungeon. I think there’s another conversation to be had about the relationship between game knowledge as part of game skill, since it’s not always treated that way. The way “skill” is used often just makes me think they’re talking about reflexes.

"...the other part of the Souls experience--the things outside of their combat that make them special--continue to atrophy with no end in sight to what can be lost." I strongly disagree. Maybe you don't enjoy Elden Ring's combat, and that's fine. But I'd say the visual design of enemies, bosses, and overall artistic direction in Elden Ring are all significantly above any previous FromSoft entry. I'd also argue that the level design of both Shadow Keep and Stormveil are among the best levels FromSoft has ever made. I didn't get to listen to all of your video since I have a pretty busy job/life. But it seems like much of your complaint about level design centers around the issue with warping, which has existed in FromSoft games for a quite a while. Yes, in DS1 you needed the Lord Vessel first. And, truthfully, I think it does add something to require a bit more manual navigation. But after DS1, warping between bonfires easily has existed in pretty much every game. So I think it'd be more accurate to say, "I prefer DS1's method of navigation and requiring a player to learn the layout of the world before being able to warp." Instead of essentially saying that Elden Ring had a huge dropoff in quality because it allows players to warp right away. Combat-wise: I have to agree that the camera issues are inexcusable at this point. I found the camera pretty much flawless in Sekiro and much preferred the combat system. Mechanically, I'd say it's my favorite FromSoft game. I also agree about the limitations about the combat system leading to less skill expression. Ironically, Sekiro has greater skill expression with the use of prosthetics and combat skills than Elden Ring does, despite only having one weapon. In general, I think they could use to limit the weapon options so they can build a more complex combat system around them. I also think magic is seriously underdeveloped in these games. It's either a mindless easy mode or impossible to cast a spell in a boss fight without a summon taking aggro for you. It's a shame, since Miriam's Vanishing would have been a fantastic fix for this if it had some tweaks. Imagine if it had a faster start-up cast, a bit more i-frames and a better window for you to cast spells during the portion in which you're invisible. The cost, of course, would be FP usage. For PVP I can't imagine how it'd disrupt things. But in general I found myself uninterested in the magic system since it didn't seem balanced for the experience. Overall, though, I still think Elden Ring and its DLC are one of the best games I've played in my life, let alone this year. It was wildly ambitious and I think succeeded a great deal, but definitely had some rough patches as well. I'm hopeful that FromSoft's next entry is more pared back and has greater depth. While I still enjoy the Souls-style games and I do hope they continue iterating with that format and improving it, their most interesting entries seem to be the ones that fall outside of that.

This is why I will always prefer demon souls because it actually tries to give the player a unique experience with every boss instead of basically just forcing them into the same trial and error memorization game every single time. The biggest strength of the early souls games in general was how they took certain video game conventions and spun them on their head to give you an experience unlike any other, whether it's patches tricking you as an NPC, the world tendency, the player losing half their health when they lose human form, the way sif is suddenly humanized near the end of his fight when he's crippled, astrea killing herself after you defeat her body guard, the tragic endings to the NPC questlines in DS1 and how npcs would get killed if you let a certain other one back into the nexus or firelink shrine. It was all so fucking cool, and it's all been buried under "THIS IS SO HARD OMG" when especially the EARLY souls' games were never that hard to begin with lol. They were like moderately difficult most of the time, and occasionally had big difficulty spikes in certain areas or bosses. IMO the only reason the souls games got that reputation was simply because they came out in a time when video games were dumbed down to hell for the casual market, think back to the ps3/xbox 360 cod days with regenerative health and obnoxious, insistent player guidance etc, and it's no wonder why they were seen as the second coming of christ when it came to difficulty.

You people complained that elden ring was too easy.

My father is 65 years old and has completed the entire game, reaching over level 300. I was surprised that he played an RPG, especially since Elden Ring is one of the more challenging ones. He’s never played an RPG before. Yet many gamers complain that Elden Ring is so difficult, trying to dismiss it as a bad game because of its challenge. I’ve now played 22.5 hours, reached level 42, and I think this is one of the better games released in recent years. Sure, the first 10 hours were tough, but by improving and understanding the game mechanics, it went from being difficult to being incredibly enjoyable. Once you learn how the game is meant to be played, it clicks. Games should be challenging, just like they were in the ’80s and ’90s. Developers shouldn’t try to make games that appeal to everyone, because that often results in a bland experience. For those who prefer games that guide you every step of the way, where you can kill all the bosses without breaking a sweat or using much thought, this type of game isn’t for you. And that’s okay! Not every game has to cater to every audience. But for those who enjoy well-designed challenges, Elden Ring stands out as a masterpiece. So what’s the point of nitpicking small details, ridiculing them, and claiming these details make the game worthless? Go play your simpler games where you can breeze through everything - there are plenty of titles in that genre. It’s just ridiculous to claim you were 'forced' to play through a game you hated just to 'warn others.' Just admit that it’s not your genre. For example, I dislike football games. But I don’t go around complaining about how bad football’s rules are or how boring it is to chase a ball back and forth across a field with no variation. It’s not for me, but I respect those who enjoy football and find it entertaining. Every genre has its audience, and it’s important to recognize that.

The game is so bad that I had to play through the entire game and its DLC just to make a video about how terrible it is and warn other players not to make the same mistake. Most of it is worthless - maybe 10% is decent, but the rest is awful. Do not buy this game, as almost everything about it is a waste of time. For those of you who hate this game and think it was terrible but still played through the entire thing, leave a comment below and share your experience to warn others about how bad it is. Join the fight to stop others from making the same mistake we did. This game is nowhere near a 10/10 - it’s more like a 5.5/10, maybe even less.

I understand that Miyazaki wants the player to feel the true scale of the fights in his world, but we need better movement options and an adjustable camera. You can already customize buttons, which is good since I can change the inputs to something im more comfortable with. It would've been awesome if you could do something like use movement AoW to replace your regular dodge and not make it only available on the L2 button and in the Right Hand weapon. They could've been attachable to Armor Chest Pieces. It could've been a new thing that could be carried into The Lands Between.

You're not even using summons. The game is not too hard. You are deliberately handicapping yourself and then complaining about it.

4:51 You are basically repeating yourself here and not really responding to Joseph Anderson. What if a player plays darkest Dungeon perfectly and mitigates everything and that still happens? Like his example has clear mistakes, but what is your response if all the characters were at full health and the Zealot was one shotted on the first turn? This can happen in Darkest Dungeon. That's not variance, that's BS! If I always need to use stun to mitigate that BS, that's not really variance and instead seems like there's only one way to play this game to it's end without losing important party members!

Cool video

I played Bloodborne, Elden Jank, Demon Souls but honestly Armored Core is far more superior in every way, wish Fromsoft focus on their AC games from now on.

The loss of immersion cannot be understated. This video mentions a lot, but what broke me was the R2 jump attack. Despite its use for stance breaking, i actively avoid using it because it looks so ridiculous.

I get frustrated too much and generally not very skilled but i completed Sekiro 3 times and loved it (except the headless, just why Rromsoft?) Elden ring was great for the 1st third, then the open world actively worked against it in the second third and the last third was everything your saying in this video Miyazaki is like Tarantino, comes out swinging with something original (demon souls / resevoir dogs) refines it (dark souls/ pulp fiction) then does something unexpectedly more refined and shows growth (sekiro / Jackie brown) then does a u turn and doubles down on the cartoony over the top stuff from the start (Elden ring / everything since Jackie Brown)

Elden Ring is just simple and really big. A lot of design choices in the game are for the sake of the world building. And even though Elden Ring is a better "game" than other Fromsoft tittles. It can be fatiguing being steamrolled in a game that takes a long time to experience. While the lore and story being different and hard to follow.

I wish they would focus on making hard levels again. I want to actually feel like I'm fighting through an adventure, dying a lot and running out of resources while exploring. Imagine if they made a level that was as hard as Rhadan, where everyone was saying that it took them hours to figure out and beat. That would actually be genuinely exciting and interesting, having to factor in all the details of the level, mastering every encounter, making sure you handle resources well etc. As it is now, levels aren't obstacles you face on an adventure, they're just forgettable paths to the boss checkpoint. Somehow Bloodborne's first level has better encounter design than the entirety of ER.

From Software History: - make genre-defining unique combat based on grounded realism and immersion - slowly ruin it by trending towards generic quick time event anime fights I bet my life savings that most of the ER playerbase would praise From if they make all attacks cancelable in their next game

Personally, I found the scoring system to be pretty intuitive. I redid some encounters and noticed that despite the high letter rank, my score wasn't that high compared to the last time I did that same encounter and it was pretty clear to me that it was because I cleared it too quickly. It's not really "stylish" to just walk in, delete the enemies, then walk out. But going in and flexing your sick skills on some grunts without bothering to bust out the big guns? That's more stylish. However, I interpreted it more as "there wasn't enough time to score more style points because I cleared it too fast." As for how forgiving or lenient the meter is? Well, there were times when I felt like I got the S rank too quickly but other times where it felt like I should've gotten it sooner. It's generally a mixed bag for me.

Does anyone else agree that Dark Souls 2 is better than Elden Ring? They both have issues but I find Elden Ring’s more grating and prevalent. I’m wondering if others feel the same.

One thing i'll disagree on is messmer's delayed spear poke. He drags it into the ground so it makes perfect sense for it to slow down and quickly snap at you. It's a move that makes you actually think about the fight instead of dodging on intuition while being an attack someone like messmer would actually use.

I loved SOTE, but also generally agree with this critique… can I have it both ways???

I have no issues with the camera maybe try to lern enemy pattern ,keep some distance to react to moves and dont roll into their feet like you did in this video 95% all the time

It’s ironic that a series about the world become stagnant, is being critiqued for becoming stagnant.

Disagree with basically everything

I think if they made bosses without everything you complain about, they would be super boring and easy and I would hate them